The NotSoProdigal Son
by Jeune Ecrivain
Summary: Clark confronts JorEl in the Fortress of Solitude and says everything he should've said all along. SEASON 5 SPOILERS


**The Not-So-Prodigal Son**

**By Jeune Ecrivain**

**Rating: T**

**Summary: Clark confronts Jor-El in the Fortress of Solitude and says everything he should've said all along. WARNING: Clark and Jor-El may seem slightly out of character, but I just REALLY want to see Jor-El get his comeuppance!  
**

Clark Kent stormed into his secret Arctic hideaway, half angry and half afraid of what he might find out. Under other circumstances, he might have actually chuckled, since being there reminded him of Chloe's clever description of the locale as resembling "a rich Eskimo's mansion." But after seeing Lana groan in pain moments before an unearthly bright light suddenly and instantaneously radiated from her abdomen, he was in no mood for humor. Lana had collapsed after the eerie incident, and she had yet to regain consciousness. Clark's gut told him his biological father was involved, and after the latter's statements regarding his resurrection and the price that was to be paid for it, the former dreaded that his worst fears had come true.

"Jor-El!" he cried in no particular direction.

"I am here, Kal-El," replied a voice with a slight echo. Clark turned in the direction from which the voice had seemed to come to find a ghostly figure standing before him. It was almost like looking in a mirror, and Clark knew that he was staring his biological father in the eye for the first time.

"Jor-El," Clark repeated, suddenly feeling the urge to kneel and beg for Lana's life. Yet he remained standing, determined not to put himself any more at Jor-El's mercy than he already was.

"You are to call me 'Father,' Kal-El. I will not tell you again."

"I'll call you whatever the hell I want," Clark snapped, momentarily surprised at his own words. "What did you do to Lana?" he demanded, cutting right to the point.

The holographic figure looked upon his flesh-and-blood son impatiently. "I warned you of the consequences of your defiance. The balance of nature cannot be upset by your resurrection."

Clark swallowed, inwardly realizing the growing impulse to cry out in agony. "Jor-El. I'm going to ask you again. Take my powers away. Kill me if you have to. But leave her alone. I won't let you punish her for what I've done."

"You don't even realize what you've done," Jor-El said distastefully. "You should be grateful, Kal-El, that it is not your beloved Lana who will restore nature's balance."  
Clark almost breathed a sigh of relief, but the question of what had really happened to Lana and who actually was the one whose life would be sacrificed for his own remained. "Then what happened to her. I know you had something to do with it."

Jor-El almost seemed to ignore his inquiry. "I warned you someone you loved would pay the price for your revival, and so it has come to pass. The person who has given his life for yours was not my original choice, but your carelessness presented me with someone that I considered it more important to be rid of."

Now, in addition to anger and fear, Clark now had a slight confusion to deal with. "I don't understand," he said.

The holographic Jor-El looked upon his son with a sentencing eye. "By disobeying my will, you have forfeited the life….of your unborn son."

Clark's jaw dropped, and for an instant, shock overtook all other emotions. But his anger and growing resolve returned as quickly as they had gone, accompanied by an all-too present feeling of guilt. His anger, however, was quickly rising to supremacy in his emotional state. "You'd do that? You'd kill your own grandson?"

"That abomination that you so aptly placed in her womb would have only distracted you further from your destiny!" Jor-El nearly shouted, losing his otherwise unsettling calmness for the first time. "I sent you here to conquer this planet, not to breed with these inferior Terrans and beget filthy half-breeds!"

Jor-El's choice of words in that last sentence finally pushed Clark over the edge. "You killed my child…without giving me and Lana that choice!" he yelled. "No, no," he digressed. "All ethical issues of abortion aside, you killed your own grandchild!" He then let out an uncharacteristically sardonic and bitter laugh. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised! You're already a tyrant as a father! I should've expected you to be an even worse grandfather!"

"Kal-El…" his father warned.

Clark ignored him. "You called my son a 'filthy half-breed,' and you're always preaching to me about how 'inferior' humans are! Well, I am SICK of you calling the people I love inferior and filthy! And I'll tell you something else, Jor-El…"

"FOR THE LAST TIME, YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS 'FATHER'!"

Clark was not intimidated. "I will call you father…" he said, his eyes nearly blazing as he stared the hologram in the eye, "…the day you call me 'Clark.'" His vocal volume diminished to where he was no longer yelling but still sounded more demanding and firm than he ever had. "I am not Kal-El. Kal-El is everything I don't want to be, and I will NOT play Dr. Jekyll to his Mr. Hyde again."

"Kal-El is who you are!" Jor-El said sternly. "Clark Kent is the illusion. Clark Kent is forever weakened by human-learned emotions. Kal-El is unencumbered by them."

Clark scoffed disdainfully and turned his back to his biological father. "You talk about human emotions like they're some kind of disease," he said, an idea striking him in mid-sentence. "But I know you know otherwise," he said, glaring back at Jor-El over his shoulder.

Jor-El was instantaneously silent, still indignant but contemptuously curious as to what his son could possibly mean by that.

"You were in love once," Clark observed as he turned to face his authoritarian parent once more, gleam in his eye as he inwardly wondered why he hadn't thought of this sooner. "With a Terran woman, no less," he added. "Louise."

"Do not speak of her," Jor-El ordered as calmly as he could.

Clark secretly reveled in Jor-El's subtle disquietude, realizing he had quite possibly found a precious psychological weakness. "But surely you couldn't have loved such an inferior being. Why, then, did you make love to her just like I did with Lana? Why would you have risked everything in telling her the truth about where you were really from? Why did you find all those memories precious enough to store in the cave walls?"

Jor-El remained stoic, which only encouraged Clark further.

"What was she, Jor-El?" the younger Kryptonian pressed on. "Just some sexual plaything to make your stay on this wretched planet a little more bearable?"

"Stop speaking about her!" Jor-El roared. "You do not know anything about it!""Oh, but I do," Clark said. "I saw the memories, Jor-El. You're no stranger to love, much less love of a Terran woman. I know that, at one time, you were capable of all the emotions you now denounce as weaknesses."

"On the contrary!" sneered Jor-El. "That experience did exactly what it was intended to do: it enlightened me to the flaws and the corruption that lies in such emotions."  
"And the pain?" It was more of a statement than a question. "I know how hard it must have been to lose her…" Clark was now circling his father slowly, eying him every so often to show the lack of intimidation he felt. "…but just because things went horribly wrong with you and Louise does not give you the right to take it out on me and Lana…or on anyone else I love."

"Whether or not she lives, you will emerge from your relations with the Terran girl as hurt as I was, if not more."

"Maybe, maybe not," Clark said with a casualness that irked his father. "But one thing I do know: if it doesn't work out between us, I will not become so embittered that I turn into some sort of real-life Anakin Skywalker."

"You compare me to a mythical figure of Terran culture," Jor-El mused sarcastically. "How lame."

"Well, I am kind of looking at Darth Vader right now," Clark quipped sharply as he stopped circling Jor-El and looked him straight in the eye.

"Kal-El," Jor-El urged, "this planet is running rampant with weak, corrupt, and sometimes downright evil beings. You have the potential to change that and remake it in the image of Krypton's former glory." He said the last part almost tragically. "Why can I not get you to see that?"

"You're right," Clark admitted thoughtfully. "The race that people like Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy are members of can hardly call itself perfect by any means. But if you're any kind of representative of the Kryptonian race, then Kryptonians are just as bad if not worse."

"How dare you…!" Jor-El seethed.

"There is a lot of good will and wisdom on this planet, in case you haven't noticed. And I intend to help rid it of the not-so-good elements. But I am not going to do it by executing some sort of global coup d'état and becoming a ruthless king. I am going to do it by helping the human race correct itself."

"Your naiveté shall be your downfall, Kal-El."

Clark decided to ignore this statement. "You may have taken away Lana's and my decision about our child, but that's going to be the last thing you'll ever take from me. If you interfere in my life one more time, I will destroy the pendant that stores all of your virtual-reality memories of Louise."

Clark returned to Kansas with a mix of emotions coursing through him, some of them were not pleasant. One of them, however, was satisfaction;…the satisfaction that he had rendered the imperious Jor-El speechless.


End file.
